. /.  WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION  G/TBT/W/253 
13 June 2005 
 
 (05-2467) 
Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade Original:   English 
  
 
FOURTH TRIENNIAL REVIEW OF THE AGREEMENT ON  
TECHNICAL BARRIERS TO TRADE 
 
Communication from the European Communities
  
 
 
 The following communication, dated 10 June 2005,  is being circulated at the request of the 
Delegation of the European Communities. 
 
_______________  
 
 
I. THE TRANSPARENCY ISSUE 
1. The elaboration and development of techni cal regulations and conformity assessment 
procedures is an issue that concerns both the domest ic and foreign public.  Transparency is necessary 
to ensure that Members are properly informed a nd that comments expressed by Members are properly 
taken into account.  The TBT Agreement provides fo r transparency rules (see Background Note by 
the Secretariat on Transparency Requirements and Procedures, G/TBT/W/250).  The European 
Communities believes that by easy and inexpensiv e means, notably the use of the Internet, 
transparency within the existing frame work can be further enhanced.   
2. The European Communities notes that, following on from the Third triennial review, efforts 
have been undertaken to promote a more widespre ad dissemination of comments and replies relating 
to notified draft technical regulations and conformi ty assessments procedures.  In this context, it 
draws the attention of Members to the web-site of the European Communities 
(http://europa.eu.int/comm/enterprise/tbt/) on which all comments and replies issued or received by 
the European Communities are made public.  In or der to further enhance the possibility of all 
Members to become acquainted with the exchange  of views within the notification procedure 
established by the TBT Agreement, the European Communities would suggest the communication of 
all comments on notifications and subsequent replies to the TBT-Secretariat and their publication on 
the WTO/TBT web-site.  This would facilitate the a ccess of other Members and other stakeholders to 
the full set of comments and responses that follow a notification. Members could therefore take 
advantage of the legal expertise expressed by othe r Members and 'best practices' could be identified 
with respect to the regulatory approach to certain problems. 
3. The European Communities would like to reitera te its former proposal (G/TBT/W/197) to 
find ways to facilitate access to final texts of not ified draft technical regulations or conformity 
assessments procedures.  The access to the final te xt of technical regulations and conformity 
assessment procedures, as required by Articles 2.11 and 5.8 of the TBT Agreement, is key to ensuring that Members and their enterprises are informed a bout the rules applicable to the products to be 
placed on the market.  It is also useful in so far as it allows Members who submitted comments to a 
notification to check how these comments have been  taken into account.  Transparency will only be 
achieved if systematic access to final texts is ensure d.  One way to achieve this could be to publish 
final texts on national web-sites and to draw the Co mmittee's attention to these.  The Member, author G/TBT/W/253 
Page 2  
 
of a notified technical regulation or conformity assessment procedure, could also send the adopted 
version of the text to the Members who have submitted comments informing them by this means 
about the follow-up of their internal regulatory procedure.  
4. The European Communities would like the sharin g of translation of notified texts to be 
enhanced.  This could be particularly useful for developing country Members, because it would 
reduce costs and save time. Available translations of  a notified text could be posted on national web-
sites and a corresponding message could be sent to the TBT-Secretariat and/or the other Members. 
5. According to the Background Note mentioned ab ove (G/TBT/W/250) only 8 notifications of 
technical regulations and conformity assessment pro cedures of local governments at the level directly 
below that of the central government in Members have been made in the period 1995 to 2004.  The 
European Communities remains concerned about this low level of notifications at sub-state level.  The 
European Communities welcomes that this issue w as dealt with at the Fourth Special Meeting on 
Procedures for Information Exchange (4 November  2004) and invites the Secretariat to remain 
engaged in providing further information on this matter. 
6. Finally, the European Communities would like to  suggest that notifications by Members are 
improved by providing more exte nsive information in Section 6 "Description of content".  The 
description of the objective and rationale should allow other Members to make a first analysis of the 
proposal.  It is also proposed that in Section 11 of the notification, if the text is not available through 
an internet site or otherwise electronically, a copy of the text, whenever possible, should be attached 
to the actual notification. 
__________